Erdan insists that the letter “reveals the fact that she backs the ideology of the boycott,” and falls far short of demands that she publicly apologize and renounce all BDS against Israel both in the past and future to be “considered for admission.”

Alqasem is contesting her detention by the Israeli government, though Judge Erez Yakuel gave no indication when he would reach a decision. She is being held at Ben Gurion Airport.

Despite immigration decisions seemingly not being up to Erdan in the first place, he accused Alqasem of planning to enter Israel to “gather information and misrepresent it around the world.” Alqasem was accused of attending a rally of as many as 19 people calling for the boycott of a brand of Israeli-made hummus.

She had been approved to attend Hebrew University for her master’s degree studies. The US State Department has confirmed they are “aware” of her detention,but that Israel can do whatever they decide. They added that the US government opposes BDS.

If the US government can look the other way when its president is assassinated, its warships are attacked, and large buildings in a major US city destroyed by its perfidious hegemon, why would the persecution of a lone citizen by the same cause it any concern?

They didn’t have to grant her a visa and then abduct her when she arrived.

Furthermore, boycotts/sanctions/divestment neither necessarily “destroy” a country, or are even intended to. They are often simply meant to pressure a country’s government to act in certain ways.

In the case of this movement, its specifically stated goal is to encourage “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights.”

And israels war on the global BDS movement just gets more hilarious and bizarre. An Israel court has ordered two New Zealand
women to pay NZ$18,000 in damages for harming the “artistic welfare” of three
Israeli teenagers after the pop star Lorde cancelled a planned
performance in Tel Aviv. The two NZ women, like many others, simply wrote a letter urging Lorde to cancel her concert in Tel Aviv. Pathetic little kitty liter box that israel.